The Journey So Far

A chronological stroll thru the history of Broadway Musicals as they came to be recorded by Hollywood--the summation of a lifelong vocation, and a journey of self discovery. Equal parts cultural history, critique and personal memoir. Comingnext: Jersey Boys

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Mamma Mia!

July 16,
2008, Universal 108 minutes

I was struck by a comment
from the Irish-American author, J.P. Donleavy who just died at age 91 that
“Writing is turning one’s worst moments into money.” My problem is that I can't
seem to do that. I prefer my writing to take me away from my worst moments, not quarry them for mental therapy or
literary revenge--let alone money. Sure, I'd love to quantify my musings into
currency (any takers?) but really I'm compelled more by love to note this
sentimental education, while I still have the memory to do so. For lately it
seems to be slipping. At least for latter day events--fewer of which seem
important, or hold any fissure of impact or excitement. And that is as good a
place as any to start with Mamma Mia!
As with more than a few latter day Bway musicals--and biggest
hits--here's another one I couldn't get much interested in.

If Zorba's Greeks were depressing to Ethan Mordden for pretending to
be life-affirming while embracing an amoral nihilism, Mamma Mia! could be seen as a corrective on steroids. Every moment
with these "Greeks" bursts with life-affirming intentions. Yet all of
these main characters are anything but Greek. Only the chorus--a literal Greek
Chorus natch-- lends any native flavor beyond the scenery, which is that added
element Bway couldn't supply to make this jukebox musical a Hlwd blockbuster.
It was no slouch on Bway either, running over 5,000 performances over 14 years.
The original West End production first starting partying like it was 1999. It
was. And from there the show moved across the planet like a virus, such was the
pop contagion that was a Swedish band called ABBA--a moniker formed of the
first name initials of its quartet (they could as easily have been BABA.); two
married couples, no less, inevitably headed for divorce. Winners of the 1974
Eurovision Song Contest the group captured numerous foreign markets, but not
quite so rapidly in America. At that time my take on their glam-pop sound was
the definition of Eurotrash, as dismissable as disco; and equally surprising in
its durability, which is what Mamma Mia!
not simply proves, but fairly flaunts. A Greatest Hits album laid on an
innocuous past-catches-up-with-present story, set in a Greek inn. Purists may
scoff but who can argue its commercial success?

Mamma Mia! was the brain-child of
British producer, Judy Craymer, whose idea of setting ABBA's pop hits to a
narrative story was initially met with skepticism by its own authors, Benny
Andersson & Bjorn Ulvaeus. Nonetheless British playwright Catherine Johnson
was engaged, and a story was laid out--one that drew comparisons with a '68
Melvin Frank Hlwd comedy, Buona Sera,
Mrs. Campbell. (Three Americans return to an Italian village where their
one-time wartime romance--with Lollabrigida--yielded a child. But whose?) MM inverts this so that none of its male
trio are aware of a child--who is the one inviting them back to determine her
parentage. In time Andersson & Ulvaeus succumbed to the show's
creation--tho no new material was offered. By then the duo had embarked on
their own forays into legit theater with Chess,
and a Swedish language epic, Kristina.
Putting it all together was stage director Phyllida Lloyd--completing the
triumvirate of 40s Brit birds (all born within weeks of each other), making
this a rare femme-centric production from the top down. A prolific stage
director, Phyllida wasn't an obvious choice for film director, Still, if Julie
Taymor could prove her talents translated to film, why not Lloyd? And as it
happens, she does a surprisingly fluid and cinematic job--especially
considering how static the stage show had to be. The movie soaks in the Greek
Isle milieu, much as The Sound of Music
gave us Salzburg as porn. I could see similarites between the two pics in their
pride of place and contagiously crossover songs--qualities which helped make
each the highest grossing movie musical of their time.

Is there anything Meryl
Streep can't do? I'm convinced she could transform herself into Hattie
McDaniel, should she so desire. Just as Julie Andrews was that unquantifiable
X-tra that sold The Sound of Music;
Streep's contribution here is incalculable. Aside from making each moment on
screen count for something, who knew she could sing? Well, some of us did--she
had her climatic moment in Postcards from
the Edge, and there was some pseudo-musical comedy in Death Becomes Her, but she tears into the songs here, convincing
you she really was head of pop group
back in the day. She has quite a few numbers as well, and they range in moods
and styles. Her vanity & indulgence in "Money, Money, Money" is
hilarious.; she's a pied piper thru "Dancing Queen," a heart-sick
belter in "SOS"; a sentimental mother lamenting with "Slipping
Thru My Fingers"--and managing to keep it maudlin-free. And then topping
it all with her eleven o'clock number: "Winner Takes it All" making
it an entire master class of acting. She isn't just Donna Sheridan, she's Medea
reading Jason the riot act. She sells the hell out of it--and her vocal stands
up to any classic Bway turn.

Of her former band-mates (The
Dynamos), I find Christine Baranski the more believable and enjoyable to watch.
She gets her own production number with "Does Your Mother Know?"
Julie Walters seems a bit too frumpy, and I find myself constantly wishing it
were Tracey Ullman, who would have brought a bit more sparkle to the part (as
well as recalling the great chemistry she had with Streep in Plenty.) The 3 potential fathers are a
former James Bond, Pierce Bronson; Bridget Jones's crush, Colin Firth; and
Stellan Skarsgard, a Swede (changed from the play's Australian.) Perhaps these
are a middle-aged woman's fantasy trio--they're not mine. In truth none of
their characters are interesting, even with
Firth "coming out" by the end, flirting with a hirsute Greek
(which is redundant I suppose). The script doesn't help them out by making the
guys too slow on the uptick--wouldn't Sophie's age immediately suggest their
potential parentage?--particularly paired with an invitation to her wedding?
Duh.

But Amanda Seyfried scans well against Meryl, her singing as laudable and
their familial resemblance uncanny. Her boy-toy groom-to-be, Dominic Cooper
provides eye candy with his half-naked, sun-tanned bod. And a deep-black
British kickboxer with electro-shock hair and a killer smile, Philip Michael, pops
up from time to time as a strangely ardent suitor of Christine Baranski. Not a
bad group of people to spend a couple of hours with.

Universal released the film
in July, boosting it to a global take over $600 million, the 5th highest
grossing film of 2008 (in which it must be noted the rest of the top ten were
either superhero, animated or action flicks.) Here was a real throwback, a musical! And yet despite my respect
& love for Andersson & Ulvaeus' Chess,
a score stiched from ABBA pop hits had no purchase on my interest, which kept
me from seeing the movie until December. With mild surprise, I liked it more
than expected, but apparently not enuf to see it again until now. Nor did it
awaken any new desire to see the show on stage--where it remained lodged in the
Winter Garden for another seven years after the film's release!

That summer I returned to
NY for the first time in 3 years, and found to my dismay an unfamiliar
antagonist: oppressive humidity--which consequently impacted my heavily scheduled
week of theatregoing far too much. 9 shows in 8 days: Young Frankenstein, The Country Girl, Mary Poppins, August: Osage
County, Gypsy (with Patti Lupone), Spring
Awakening--none of which resonated like they promised. Hairspray (then in its last year; with Bruce Villanch) proved the
single true highlight--even tho I arrived late, on the run the final 12 blocks,
hyper-ventilating and sweating into the Siberian air-conditioning. I was sure I was having a heart attack the

next night, thru In the Heights--a false alarm that didn't fully abate thru my final
hoped-for enchanted evening: Bartlett Sher's South Pacific--one supposedly for the ages, but not, alas, for me
in my frazzled state. Had it come to this? Was I over New York? Had I become my
father?

More enjoyable trips were
made to LA and Vegas. Larry & I took a train to San Diego to see the
Bway-hopeful adaptation of MGM's Bandwagon
musical (retitled Dancing in the Dark)
which (deservedly) went no further. 9 to
5 trying out at the Ahmanson did get to Bway--another unecessary
movie-turned-musical, with an uninspired score. Closer to home, I trekked to
Mt. View to see a well-done Grey Gardens,
albeit lacking Christine Ebersole's indelible mark; and in SF: The Drowsy Chaperone on national
tour--cute, but thin. And tho I no longer frequented the resurrections at 42nd
St. Moon, curiosity

compelled me to see Rick Besoyan's Bway flop following Little Mary Sunshine: The Student Gypsy. And
also their postage-stamp version of Coco--as
I had first suggested this to Andrea Marcovicci when she came to do On a Clear Day. I was right; she was
perfect for the role and sang it miles above Katharine Hepburn--tho without
much of a production the show is a wash.

As I noted at the time,
2008 was a mixture of hope & suffocation--an anxious year. A tense
constipated sense of world affairs at the collapse of the Bush term reflected
my own creative stassis at the time. For once I wasn't capable of anything but
watching the fate of the world unfold. With Greg still healing (at great
expense), and Mother still hanging on (ever more erratic) was it any wonder I
started having panic attacks, which Kaiser readily medicated. Effective as
these drugs were I didn't particularly enjoy them enuf to develop an addiction.
But one doesn't need new addictions with the cable universe. TV was well enuf
to fill any void; particularly when the quality was on the epic level of Mad Men or Pushing Daisies--among dozens of others. A few theatrical films
made lasting impact: Wes Anderson's Darjeeling
Limited and Paul Thomas Anderson's There
Will Be Blood were the comedy & drama of the year, but the musical was
Julie Taymor's Across the Universe.
Another jukebox tuner (using the Beatles catalog) the film, alas, is
egregiously underrated--one of the best original musicals in many years. One
more must be mentioned for merely one scene: the last. After a series of
adventures getting to the sea, Mr. Bean's
Holiday ends with Bean finding a open door, and at last, sight of the
Riviera. Filming with his camera, Bean steps out onto a roof, and Magoo-like
descends an unlikely but magical staircase that forms from street traffic and
other objects placed in his path, carrying him down to the beach; scored to
Charles Trenet's "La Mer." (The French pop tune that became
"Beyond the Sea" in America) By the time the film's cast is
lipsynching to the full-bodied chorus I am happily brought to tears. (It's
easily found on Youtube). Rahadlakum like this is precious gold. It fills me
with hope.

There was an enormous
infusion of hope that November when after a closely watched year, the Man I
backed (who had me at hello) made the most remarkable, unprecedented ascent to
the presidency. Not since JFK had there been such a sense of new energy, style
and common sense, and I had a new hero: Obama. But the pendulum swings, and now
that it's swung to the point of idiocy; nuclear trash-talking, public snipers
and a parade of natural catastrophes (hurricanes in Houston, Florida, Puerto
Rico; fires in California), the state of the world is very depressing. Over
this time I watched Mamma Mia! five
times; it's songs rattled my brain nonstop for weeks (they are the fiercest earworms). In the end, for me
the surprise of Mamma Mia! was that
its value is essential and clear. Something silly, tuneful and lovely to look
at becomes a comforting balm in hard times.

Apparently that isn't lost
upon the film's creatives: an original film sequel is now on the way: Mamma Mia!: Here We Go Again.

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About this Blog

At the intersection of Broadway and Hollywood,

the Musical has been my lifelong touchstone. How did this happen? What does it mean? Herewith an analysis of my own"glass menagerie;" a Proustian trail of memory and perhaps a final summation of my thoughts and feelings on this unrelenting vocation.

About Me

A man on the verge of a musical breakdown. Why did I do it? What did it get me? Scrapbooks full of me in the background: New York, Hollywood, San Francisco. Palm Springs. This time, boys, I'm takin' the bows.